Windows 7

SIW2 · 25 Jan 2010

You can run 7 setup from within Vista without any damage to your Vista installation.

acdcfan · 25 Jan 2010

SIW2 said:

You can run 7 setup from within Vista without any damage to your Vista installation.

I will try to boot from it ....
My boot manager should stay intact, shouldn't it?

gregrocker · 25 Jan 2010

I'd remove the formatting from the Win7 target HD in DISK0 partition.

This is because the installer looks for the first active partition to place or update the MBR when configuring the boot.

Since you want a multi-boot with XP/Vista, you need to have Win7 update the MBR on the System Active XP drive.

To avoid confusing the installer by installing to an active drive which is before the System Active (XP) drive, remove the active flag from Win7 by removing the formatting now and using the booted Win7 installer to create and format the partition.

If for some reason Win7 DVD cannot be booted to use Custom Drive Tools to format DISK0, then run the installer from Vista as it will auto-format during Copying Files phase.

You could also move XP HD into DISK0 position to avoid a possible problem.

acdcfan · 25 Jan 2010

gregrocker said:

I'd feel a little better assuring you that Win7 will correctly configure your multi-boot if XP remains in the DISK0 position. This is because the installer looks for the first active partition to place the MBR, or in the case of a dual- or multi-boot, to update the MBR accordingly.

It is difficult to swap it all around

gregrocker said:

However, if it is inconvenient to swap XP into DISK0 position, I think you can solve this easily enough by deleting the formatting from the Win7 target HD to remove the active flag, then use the booted Win7 installer to create and format the partition to install there.

OK
I will delete partition and format it from installation disk

gregrocker said:

If you can't boot the Win7 installer and must run it from Vista, you won't get the Custom Drive tools to delete/create/format partitions. But the Win7 installer will auto-format the unallocated space during the Copying Files phase, so you can go ahead and delete the Win7 hD formatting now in Vista Disk Mgmt and begin the install from Vista if neccessary.

right now all I want is to install it

gregrocker · 25 Jan 2010

Then you're good to go. If an OS is missing from boot menu, we can help you add it easily enough using EasyBCD 2.0 beta which is fully automated.

acdcfan · 25 Jan 2010

I thank Theog, Gregrocker and SIW2 for their help....
Guys I have tipped your scales ....

Now If you can show me how to bring all my bookmarks, bookmarks tool bar and my passwords from Vista to W7 would be great

gregrocker · 25 Jan 2010

Hopefully you have your bookmarks backed up to the default Documents bookmark folder location, or somewhere. They require exporting to be reimported.

In IE8, click Favorites>Add to Favorites down-arrow>Import>Import from File>Favorites>Location of bookmark file.

acdcfan · 25 Jan 2010

gregrocker said:

Hopefully you have your bookmarks backed up to the default Documents bookmark folder location, or somewhere. They require exporting to be reimported.

In IE8, click Favorites>Add to Favorites down-arrow>Import>Import from File>Favorites>Location of bookmark file.

I will boot into Vista and export it all.....

acdcfan · 25 Jan 2010

gregrocker said:

Hopefully you have your bookmarks backed up to the default Documents bookmark folder location, or somewhere. They require exporting to be reimported.

In IE8, click Favorites>Add to Favorites down-arrow>Import>Import from File>Favorites>Location of bookmark file.

For some reason, probably because it was no good previously, I still tend to use Firefox

gregrocker · 25 Jan 2010

Yeah they finally got IE perfected in Win7. Never misses a beat. I wouldn't use anything else here.